George Russell Reveals How “Failure” Mentality Set Him up to Achieve the Impossible Against Mercedes F1 Legend Lewis Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton is a tough customer to deal with, as a teammate. He doesn’t leave any half-measures while racing over the season, and most likely you may fall short in matching up in the same car. Though Mercedes prodigy George Russell begged to differ on the same in his first season as teammates with the 7X champion.

George Russell got the only race victory for Mercedes this year, and even beat Lewis Hamilton in the championship. It was only the third instance in 16 years of Lewis’s career, that any teammate outscored him. The first two were Jenson Button in 2011 and Nico Rosberg in 2016.

But Russell addressed that it was not easy to take on Hamilton. Talking to media including The Race, the 24-year-old mentioned how he had to mentally adjust himself for his battle with Lewis.

He said, “I was sort of used to a certain level of outscoring them [past team-mates], or whatever you want to call it, but if it’s 55/45 in my favor, even if I lose 45% of the time, that’s going to still be incredibly successful against Lewis [Hamilton].”

“So psychologically, you need to set yourself up for small failures. I’m not going to beat him every single session, every quali, every race. That’s just absolutely not gonna happen.”

Russell stated that he never doubted his capabilities, as he needed that belief to develop a winning mindset against Hamilton.

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While they did not challenge for the championship in 2022, Russell outscored Hamilton by 35 points. It will be fantastic to see the same consistency from this duo if Mercedes gets a competitive car next season.

Can George Russell iron out his racing mistakes?

Despite his consistent 2022 performance, George Russell has also been under the scanner for some incidents. As the year progressed, the former Williams driver started to show some uncharacteristic behaviors on track.

The first one of them involved dueling with Mick Schumacher at Marina Bay in the Singapore GP. The duo banged wheels into Turn 1, as Russell attempted to pass the German driver on the inside. Usually, George has not been known to bang wheels and keeps it pretty clean in wheel-to-wheel battles.

Similarly, at the Circuit of The Americas Russell punted Carlos Sainz, ending his race at Turn 1 of the US Grand Prix. Starting on the 2nd row, Russell was aiming to get a move done as polesitter Sainz was trying to cut him off. Eventually, the Ferrari driver retired due to major damage caused by the shunt with George’s Mercedes.

While these can be considered racing incidents, they are surely avoidable for a driver of Russell’s caliber. His past season performances with Williams also suggest how cleanly he can race with the best in the business.

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With an inter-team battle victory, Russell will be confident heading to Bahrain in 3 months’ time for the 2023 season opener. The question will be, can he maintain consistency over the year?